5B Fox Edward E Benjamin

SugarcanePlates

Every day, school cafeterias feed thousands and thousands of hungry students. But what happens to all that food that doesn’t get eaten? Most of it ends up in our nation’s landfills, where it emits unhealthy methane gas and odors that attract vermin and pests. The Food Cycler sterilizes and deodorizes food waste, reducing its volume by as much as 93%. The rest is recycled into an eco-friendly biomass that can be reused as a soil amendment, either on your school’s own grounds or sold for use elsewhere. In addition, the money saved on hauling all that waste to the landfill will eventually more than make up for the initial equipment investment in the Food Cycler.

* Food items most frequently thrown away uneaten are salad, vegetables and fruit. * Girls throw away more food than boys. * Younger kids trash more food that older kids. * The value of wasted food is probably around $1 billion annually.

Experts say they can’t be sure kids will actually eat the increased portions of fruits, vegetables and whole grains called for in new USDA school meal guidelines. And now the Chicago Tribune reports that kids in Chicago are turning up their noses at healthier food. At one school, the Trib measured and found that hundreds of pounds of food were being tossed in the trash ever day at just one school. That included whole apples, oranges and bananas, entire cartons of milk, unopened boxes of cereal. I observe the same phenomenon every day at the elementary school my daughter attends here in the District of Columbia. I usually stop in twice a day–breakfast and lunch–and photograph the food while watching to see what the kids are eating–or not eating. What I see routinely are kids rejecting “healthier” foods, especially vegetables and whole grains. Recently, for instance, I was surprised to see kids lining up for seconds at lunch before some kids had even been served their first portions. Turns out what they wanted were the meatballs that came with their whole wheat spaghetti. Otherwise, the pasta along with a wonderful green been salad, a side of corn and a whole wheat roll all went into the garbage can.

A different approach to reducing food waste in schools, this offers guidance on how to implement a system which allows pupils to select the meal option of their choice and provides caterers with information on exactly how many portions of each meal option to produce each day.  It also outlines a number of additional benefits that this system could bring to your school.

Packing a waste-free lunch is easy if you follow the guidelines developed by 4th graders Zane and Isaac. Key is to talk to your child about what they will and won't eat and portion size, since food waste is often more than half of the lunch wastestream. We include other helpful links and a short video that walks you through the whole process and shows you all kinds of reusable non-plastic containers - even sandwich wraps!